Cancel all your meetings; there’s a sunglass sale! Did you recently have an odd invitation on your iPhone? I did. I noticed multiple events on my calendar for a sunglasses sale alongside some foreign language characters. I found it interesting because I did not schedule or accept the event, and because it’s snowing. It turns out it’s a spam attack that’s infiltrating Apple’s iCloud calendar, and I am not alone. You too may have noticed a weird calendar alert, and if you are lucky, it came with sound at 3:00 am!

What you need to know is the spammers did not hack your account. The reason you can see the event is due to an Apple feature that shows when someone shares a meeting with you whether you accept it or not. In this instance, the spammer sends the event to multiple email addresses, but because there’s no spam folder for your calendar requests, it shows up. Apple is currently working to resolve the issue, but until they do, here are some tips to help:

1. Avoid declining the invitation. If you do so, the spammer will receive a notification of your decline, alerting them to the fact that your account is a correct one, and send you new spam.

2. Turn off the iCloud calendar. You may not use it at all if you have a Gmail or Outlook Exchange account. To do this go to Settings, Calendar, Accounts, iCloud and slide Calendars to the off selection.

3. Set up a filter calendar. If you want to keep iCloud, instead create a new calendar to move spam. To do this, open up the Calendar app, select “Calendars,” then “Edit,” and select, “Add Calendar.” Create a new calendar called, “Spam.” You can then move fake invites to that calendar and later delete it.

4. Divert invites to email. If you use iCloud for email, you do have the option to change your email preferences. You will need to login via the iCloud.com, and then you can use the advanced settings tab to modify your calendar invitation preferences. If you choose this option, remember to accept invites manually.

Did you get a spam calendar invite? Tell me about it on Twitter @nerdsquawk or via email at [email protected].

The opinions of the author are not necessarily those of Farm Futures or Penton Agriculture.